AS tasks go, putting together the CV for their next football adventure couldn’t have been overly taxing.
Person details: one of Non-League football’s most well-respected partnerships. Men of the people, with only one demand, to be left to create an attractive, passing side.
Career history: How does turning clubs’ dreams into reality grab you?
If football was fair, Terry Brown wouldn’t need to apply for jobs. Clubs would come knocking on his door.
Not only is he AFC Wimbledon’s most successful manager with three promotions in just four years, but with money tight and the League Two Dons determined to stick by their fan-ownership principles, the reality is he forever will be. The most lasting of legacies.
Stuart Cash, Brown’s trusted right-hand man, was also by his side at Aldershot. Twice so close to getting the Shots back in the Football League, the foundations were laid for Gary Waddock to finish the job. The care of Brown’s unwell wife Suzie took priority, but much of the credit for their rise back is due at his door.
And before that, Hayes. Little Hayes, who played in front of a couple of hundred most weeks if they were lucky, got to within six points of the unthinkable, winning the Conference.
But the 60-year-old is out of work properly for the first time in 20 years. He has just taken Wimbledon from rotting in the Ryman Premier to stability in League Two, but fear was growing. Concern crept in that the nine years of hard graft to get the club’s name back in the League could be horrendously undone. Legend and club parted company.
But Brown makes it clear that despite his success, he is by no means limiting himself when it comes to his next role in football.
He said: “It’s strange, it’s exactly 20 years I’ve been in management and this is the first time I’ve not known what Im doing with myself. I’m not much good at golf, my friends are taking too much of my money from me for this to carry on much longer!
“Football takes up so much of your life. Even when I was part-time, like I was for a period at all three clubs, you don’t switch off from it. When the season’s over you only get two or three Saturdays to yourself before the players are back in or you’re out meeting possible new signings.
“So this is all a bit strange. I love family time but it’s getting awkward now. We’ve spent some time going to games thinking ‘this job may come up’ but you can’t live like a parasite. There are a lot of quality managers out of work but I am a believer that you need the right vehicle at the right time.
“Managing in the Football League was a personal goal which I achieved, but for me it’s not the be all and end all. Stuart and myself are realists but there’s no reason why we can’t do it all again. I’ve still got the drive in me, that’s for sure, I’m not finished in football quite yet.”
Brown and Cash lost out to Richard Money to the Cambridge job and are currently still waiting to hear if Wycombe Wanderers will hand their vacancy to stand-in Gareth Ainsworth.
From the outside perhaps, his axing at AFC Wimbledon looked cruel. But to Brown the writing was somewhat on the wall.
“I think the goal that got us the sack (Torquay’s Rene Howe in the 1-0 win at Kingsmeadow on September 18) summed it up perfectly,”? he said. “Our keeper Seb Brown has taken a poor back pass, whacked it against the backside of a striker who probably has the biggest behind in League Two and it trickles in!
“I have no qualms about leaving Wimbledon, certainly no bitterness. I think you have a shelf life as a manager and I have been lucky. Nine years at Hayes, and five years at Wimbledon and Aldershot. I can’t have too many complaints.”
To get a measure of the men, you need look no further than the days after they departed Kingsmeadow.
Cash, signed as a left-back by Brian Clough at Nottingham Forest and by Martin O’Neill at Wycombe Wanderers, said: “Both Terry and I decided to go down to Wycombe and support the players from the stands.
“We wanted to be at the next game, and it gave us the opportunity to say goodbye to the fans and get behind Simon Bassey, our first-team coach who had taken on the caretaker manager’s role. We’ve had some wonderful experiences in football but we are already looking forward to the next chapter, to go again at another club.
“We may have been lucky location wise with our last few clubs but we are certainly willing to travel to take the next step.”
You get the feeling it won’t be too long before the pair are on the prowl in a technical area again.
